While everyone is looking to Facebook to fix the code that keep the app running in the background, questions should also be asked of Apple. Isn’t the walled garden of iOS meant to keep badly programmed and over-eager applications away from my smartphone?

No! Good God, can you imagine the table flipping tornado of mouth froth that would result if Apple denied Facebook’s app because it wasn’t written well?

On the one hand Apple is criticized by the Dan Gillmors of the world for not allowing porn and apps designed to break the law into the App Store and on the other hand it’s criticized by the Ewan Spences of the world for not conducting code reviews. If anything the Macalope sides more with Gillmor and very, very much against Spence. Unless Facebook has done something nefarious like scraping location information constantly and that’s what’s draining the battery then the fact that it’s just written a lousy app is between it and its users.

When it is put into the background on an iPhone it should sleep and go into a dormant state. Instead the application continues to drain battery power from an iPhone, reducing the life of the smartphone, with some users reporting the app is consuming 15% of total battery life over a one-week period.

OK, valid criticism, but how else are you going to be able to open it up and immediately see what your racist uncle thinks about the current state of affairs?

The battery drain is present even with the application’s permission to run in the background specifically switched off in the iOS settings panel.

So, iOS specifically includes a setting for this but Facebook’s app ignores it and the problem is in iOS because you can’t make a logical Oroborus without breaking a few snake eggs.

Facebook’s high battery drain does have a negative impact on the experience.

As does reconnecting with all those people from high school. So many reopened wounds.

Spence also had dire news about this year’s crop of iPhones for us if you were short on that.